The Joke Inside
by Chyme for the Rhyme
Summary: Everyone has time for a Christmas cracker.


The cracker in Clara's hand shivers. Her nails press down, biting into the shiny paper with a soft hiss of sound, almost a crinkle, and she knows that if she is to look down, she will be reminded of Christmas trees and the way their dark spikes divide the tinsel into glowing fragments. Like a patchwork quilt, the image sits in her memory, one she can only revisit. But still, she smiles and across the gleaming console, offers Me the other end of the cracker.

'Merry Christmas.'

The other woman raises an eyebrow, but her hand sneaks out regardless, to catch the stray zigzag pattern of gold that lurches on the corner. And it all happens with a quickness that forces Clara to blink, reminding her of just how well-versed in sword-play this other person is.

'How quaint. You know, I used to work for a company that wrote the jokes inside for a living.'

Clara feels her smile widen. 'You didn't.'

In response, Me tilts her head to one side and in that one, small, twitch, exposes the thin ligament that nestles under the skin of her neck like an instrument string, one that stretches. And in that second of fragility, Clara sees the wide, open gesture of a young woman tossing her head back, and letting hair whirl over her shoulder with a rakish grin.

'Oh, alright. I worked for a Greetings card company. It was bit of a lark really. And honestly, they both require the same trite sort of humour. I'd seen enough of the world by then to muster up the required drollness.'

'The Doctor would approve,' notes Clara. 'He thinks laughter is important.'

Again, that small gleam of the neck from Me.

'You always refer to him in the present tense. I admire that.'

'It's not bravery,' Clara tells her. 'It's fact. Neither of us is dead yet, after all.'

But there's a mountain of words running beneath that sentence she knows. Things like 'I can't run away from being locked into his past,' and 'I will be dead, one day, not today, but on a day centuries before the Doctor even begins to retire.'

She takes a breath. 'Now, are you going to pull the cracker, or not?'

But no sooner than she's spoken the question, Me yanks. And a party hat, flimsy pink in colour, floats down next to a silvery set of buttons. Clara ignores it and its ballerina-like swirl into the clutch of gravity, bending to receive the clatter of a tiny golden cannon that lands by her shoe. She squeezes her fingernails around the gleaming pattern of its stand and lifts it up to her eye, like a spyglass.

'You know,' she says softly, 'I knew a kid once who would have loved a toy like this.'

Me, meanwhile, is pouncing on the scrap of the paper that has fallen against a red lever, draping there like a flag.

'Found it!' she declares, with a rich sort of glee that has Clara has heard again and again, usually within the contours of a classroom. She clears her throat. ' _Doctor, Doctor!_ ' she recites, her voice as clipped and cultured as it would be at a poetry reading. ' _Everyone thinks I'm a liar_.'

There is a very small, pregnant pause.

'Well,' says Clara carefully, 'I know what the Doctor would say. He'd say 'of course you are, everyone is, but you must be an exceptionally bad one, to keep getting caught. That, or you have no survival skills, which is probably very bad news against the thing trying to kill us.' She pauses. 'But since, we're talking about a fictional doctor, one who's not nearly _half_ as abrasive, I imagine they'd say something like 'I don't believe you.''

Me smiles, wrapping the joke up between her fingers like a wad of chewing gum. 'You've heard that one before, haven't you?'

'Back in 1997. Took my Gran a while to get it, though.'

'Hmm.' Me twists the joke between finger and thumb, tearing it into uneven chunks. 'So...what sort of dinner do you have planned?'

'Well, I'm not cooking a turkey inside this TARDIS,' Clara declares stoutly. 'It takes forever, practically. And also, the smell afterwards is absolutely abysmal. So I thought we'd do what all lazy British people do and find a pub somewhere. And if we still can't find anywhere, then we'll get a MacDonald's from an earlier day in December.'

'Lovely,' says Me. 'Absolutely classic British behaviour. Way to take it on the chin.'

Clara smiles. 'Well, you know,' she says airily. 'It doesn't do to make grand preparations when you're a time traveller. Especially for something like Christmas. You can just re-visit it again and again.'

Besides. She's still not certain if she'll ever be able to top last Christmas. She's not even sure she wants to try.

She turns back to stare at the pink paper hat, hypnotised by the tangible waterfall of rosy colour it's pasted against her console. The next moment, she whisks it up, spearing it open with her fingers and propping it onto her head with one wry twist.

'Shall we pull another one?' she asks. 'I'll bet we can find you another one of these things in your colour.'

'Hmm. I'll probably be easier to wear than a real crown.'

Ooh. There's a story behind that one. Clara can't wait to hear it. But first she turns back to the plastic bag at her side. And pulls out another cracker.

After all, next Christmas might not roll round for a while.


End file.
